CFP

WR 26: We Robot 2026

Berlin, Germany, April 23-25, 2026

Conference website	https://ai-laws.org/werobot-2026/?lang=en
Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wr26
Abstract registration deadline	November 17, 2025
Submission deadline	March 17, 2026

Topics: artificial intelligence robotics

We Robot is heading to Europe! Join us for the first in-person We Robot conference in Berlin, Germany.

We eagerly invite submissions for the 14th annual We Robot Conference to be held in Berlin on April 24 and 25, 2026. A pre-conference workshop will also be held on April 23, 2026.

We Robot is the premiere international conference on law and policy relating to robotics. We Robot 2026 seeks contributions from academics, practitioners, artists, and polymaths, in the form of scholarly papers, technological demonstrations, or posters. We invite submissions on a range of topics related to the legal, policy, ethical, economic, social, and/or cultural aspects of robotics and artificial intelligence. Our thoroughly interdisciplinary program committee particularly encourages papers with co-authors from different fields.

We warmly welcome submissions engaging diverse methodologies, and exploring wide-ranging questions of robotics law & policy from interdisciplinary perspectives such as law, philosophy, engineering, human-robot-interaction, society and technologies studies and other sciences. Hosted over the years by the law schools of Miami, Washington, Boston, Yale, Stanford, and Windsor, We Robot fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots and the people who shape or experience the legal and social structures in which robots will operate.

If you have any questions about the submission process, please email orga@werobot2026.eu with the subject “Submission Question.” If you have technical questions or difficulties with the EasyChair submission please email orga@werobot2026.eu.

Currently we are planning for an in-person event, and are exploring ways to allow for some remote participation.

Submission Guidelines

Timelines

Abstracts must be submitted through EasyChair (see below) by Monday, November 17, 2025.

The Program Committee will return our decisions as quickly as possible. A date will soon be provided for the anticipated return of decisions.

Final papers will be due on March 17, 2026. Extensions may be granted with prior approval. Failure to submit on time may result in withdrawal of the submission.

Scholarly Papers

We encourage you to peruse our thirteen years of previous conferences for examples of successful papers.

How to Propose a Paper

Papers should be submitted through the conference submission portal. Proposers will need to provide:

Title of the proposed paper and an abstract of between 500 and 1000 words. Submitters are cautioned that proposals that exceed the length limit will be rejected and unread. In addition (not counted in the word limit) please provide a list of up to 5 key references that you refer to in the paper that will help us understand how to situate your paper in the relevant literature.
Please do NOT put any names or biographical information in your uploaded proposal. However, on a separate sheet, please – again without your name(s) or the name(s) of institutions or corporations – list the current title of each contributor (e.g. “Ph. D candidate in Mechanical Engineering” or “Associate Professor of Anthropology” or “Chief Technologist at Robotics Startup”). We are asking for this information because in past years we have sometimes struggled to determine whether proposers had the experience or disciplinary breadth to deliver on certain types of ambitious proposals; purely anonymous submissions did not, for example, allow us to tell if submissions were by one person or a group.
To preserve anonymous review, please do not ask members of the program or review committee to review draft abstracts in advance of submission.

Note on EasyChair submissions: We ask that you please fill in both the required abstract text box and upload a separate pdf of your abstract for initial submissions, in addition to including a separate page with the title of each contributor (as noted above). If you have any issues with using EasyChair, please email orga@werobot2026.eu with any questions.

We will waive conference fees for all authors of accepted papers if the full paper is submitted on time. In addition, subject to funding availability, we intend to provide for domestic air travel (or, if necessary, at least partial funding for international air travel), plus lodging, for one paper presenter provided the full paper is submitted by the due date.

Program Committee

Benjamin Brake (former Head of Unit, Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs)

Lee Andrew Bygrave (University of Oslo)

Ryan Calo (University of Washington)

Mila Dalla Preda (University of Verona)

Kate Darling (RAI Institute)

Jan de Bruyne (KU Leuven)

Suzie Dunn (Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law)

Martin Ebers (RAILS)

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga (Leiden University)

Michael Froomkin (University of Miami)

Sabine Gless (University Basel)

Sue Glueck (Independent Scholar)

Nikolas Guggenberger (University of Houston)

Woodrow Hartzog (University of Boston)

Maximilian Kiener (TU Hamburg, Centre for Ethics in Technology)

Natalie Leesakul (University of Nottingham)

Jason Millar (University of Ottawa)

Laurel Riek (University of California San Diego)

Hannah Ruschemeier (University of Osnabrück)

Giovanni Sartor (University of Bologna)

Burkhard Schafer (University of Edinburgh)

Bill Smart (Oregon State University)

Katie Szilagyi (University of Manitoba)

Helena Webb (University of Nottingham)

Stanislaw Tosza (University of Luxembourg)

Contact

Please see the conference website for further details and contact information.